Current:Home > MyGay marriage is legal in Texas. A justice who won't marry same-sex couples heads to court anyway-LoTradeCoin
Gay marriage is legal in Texas. A justice who won't marry same-sex couples heads to court anyway
View Date:2024-12-23 23:55:08
The Texas Supreme Court is reconsidering the case of a justice of the peace who for years turned away gay couples who wanted to get married even after same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide.
Oral arguments begin Wednesday in the case of Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in Waco who was reprimanded by the state’s judicial conduct commission in 2019 for only performing heterosexual weddings.
The new phase of the litigation is the first page in the final chapter of a controversial case that has lingered in the Texas court system – and hung over LGBTQ people in the state – for years. It’s yet another legal fight at the intersection of religious freedom and the civil rights of queer and transgender Americans. In recent years, as the makeup of the nation’s highest court has grown more conservative, that fight has only become more pronounced in lower courts across the country.
According to a public warning issued by the commission four years ago, which also cited reports in the Waco Tribune-Herald, Hensley and her staff started turning gay couples away around August 2016, about a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in the landmark ruling Obergefell v. Hodges. Hensley performed no marriages between the ruling and that time, according to her initial class-action petition.
That changed when she and her staff began handing gay couples documents that said: "I'm sorry, but Judge Hensley has a sincerely held religious belief as a Christian, and will not be able to perform any same sex weddings,” according to the commission's 2019 public warning.
The commission, an independent agency responsible for overseeing cases of judicial misconduct, warned Hensley she appeared to be violating state law. Hensley then sued the commission, arguing the reprimand violated her religious freedoms. Her case was eventually dismissed in appeals court. The state supreme court, which is made up entirely of Republicans, several of whom held on to their seats in the last midterm elections, agreed in late June to hear her appeal.
Selective justice of the peace:Appeals court rejects lawsuit by judge who declined to marry same-sex couples
A few days later, in a separate, widely anticipated decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a Colorado website designer could refuse service to LGBTQ clients on religious grounds. Hensley’s legal team soon filed a brief arguing that the ruling, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, should help her case. Her lawyers called the Supreme Court decision “instructive because it rejects the idea of a ‘compelling interest’ in forcing wedding vendors to participate in same-sex and opposite-sex marriage ceremonies on equal terms.”
A case about ensuring judges' impartiality
The Supreme Court case doesn't directly relate to Hensley's, one of her lawyers said. Hiram Sasser, with the Christian conservative legal group the First Liberty Institute, is among the attorneys representing Hensley. In an interview Tuesday, he said the 303 Creative case was a good example of how he wants to see the law applied to Hensley's situation.
He also defended his client. By referring gay couples to other justices who were more willing to perform weddings for them, she found a way to accommodate both her religious faith and all types of people seeking a low-cost wedding, he said.
Douglas S. Lang, a former appeals court justice representing the judicial commission in court, said Hensley’s argument that the commission discriminated against her religious beliefs isn't accurate.
The public warning, he said, was instead about her behavior, which Lang said demonstrated judicial bias.
“The Commission will stand up and argue for the preservation of the compelling interest to assure judges’ impartiality and support Texas citizens’ trust in the impartiality of the judiciary,” Lang said in an email to USA TODAY, summarizing the arguments he plans to make before the court Wednesday.
In an interview this month with the Dallas Morning News, Hensley said she didn't want to be “caricatured” as the case reenters the spotlight. She never received any complaints about turning away same-sex couples, she said. But she couldn't be held responsible for other people's feelings.
A college LGBTQ center disappeared.It wasn’t the only one.
“There have been many situations in my life when I didn’t feel overly welcomed or endorsed or whatever,” she told the newspaper. “I’m an adult. That’s just how life is.”
Johnathan Gooch, the communications director for the LGBTQ advocacy group Equality Texas, took issue with those comments. He told USA TODAY that gay couples in Texas haven’t complained about feeling unwelcome.
“They’re complaining that their rights are being ignored or overlooked,” he said. “That’s a very different situation.”
Zachary Schermele is a breaking news and education reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.
veryGood! (92462)
Related
- Why Outer Banks Fans Think Costars Rudy Pankow and Madison Bailey Used Stunt Doubles Amid Rumored Rift
- Sophia Bush Shares How Girlfriend Ashlyn Harris Reacted to Being Asked Out
- Political divisions stall proposed gun policies in Pennsylvania, where assassin took aim at Trump
- Tell Me Lies Season 2 Finally Has a Premiere Date
- Congress is revisiting UFOs: Here's what's happened since last hearing on extraterrestrials
- Indianapolis anti-violence activist is fatally shot in vehicle
- Chrysler recalls more than 24,000 hybrid minivans, tells owners to stop charging them
- Microsoft outage causes widespread airline disruptions and cancellations. Here's what to know.
- Love Is Blind’s Chelsea Blackwell Reacts to Megan Fox’s Baby News
- Carol Burnett honors friend Bob Newhart with emotional tribute: 'As kind and nice as he was funny'
Ranking
- LSU leads college football Week 11 Misery Index after College Football Playoff hopes go bust
- 9-Year-Old Boy Found Dead in Arizona Home Filled With Spiders and Gallons of Apparent Urine
- Lawsuit filed over Alabama law that blocks more people with felony convictions from voting
- Here's How to Get $237 Worth of Ulta Beauty Products for $30: Peter Thomas Roth, Drunk Elephant & More
- Stressing over Election Day? Try these apps and tools to calm your nerves
- Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff stops by USA women’s basketball practice
- In a California gold rush town, some Black families are fighting for land taken from their ancestors
- Experts say global tech outage is a warning: Next time could be worse
Recommendation
-
Sports are a must-have for many girls who grow up to be leaders
-
Canada wants 12 new submarines to bolster Arctic defense as NATO watches Russia and China move in
-
Remains of medieval palace where popes lived possibly found in Rome
-
Carroll Fitzgerald, former Baltimore council member wounded in 1976 shooting, dead at 89
-
Mike Tyson-Jake Paul: How to watch the fight, time, odds
-
Kylie Kelce Shares Past Miscarriage Story While Addressing Insensitive Pregnancy Speculation
-
JoJo Siwa Makes Comment About Taylor Swift After Breaking Record for Most Disliked Female Music Video
-
2 senior House Democrats believe Biden could leave 2024 race in days